endzone

and now you wouldn't have a job.

in the uk, the plumbers/electricians are lucky to make £20/hr.

i can't think of any reason why basic economic principles wouldn't apply.

witness the hysteria about brexit among academics and london based commentators who have no idea about the reality of life in britain

a shortage that's not reflected in the wages for skilled jobs (outside of powerful unions)

some real abuse of psychological terminology here. most clinically autistic people don't hold down jobs, certainly not professional roles, even if they have a high IQ

well we know who was always picked last

working conditions in all of those industries are terrible compared to almost all software jobs. and the work in finance and law is tedious. you're dreaming.

or instead of this parade of bullshit, they could decide admission on a truly meritocratic basis as is still done in the UK, EU and most countries around the world. you score high enough in the relevant exam and you gain entry.

anyway, the real scandal of ivy league admissions is the insane discrimination against asian americans. if you're from the preferred ethnic groups, you already get an enormous effective boost to your test scores.

what really is the value of studying these subjects at undergraduate level? i don't think i've ever seen a persuasive argument in favour

the uk funding arrangement means that no one has to fully support themselves through university, so your point really doesn't apply here.

only a select group of employers are really subject blind. for technical jobs you still need a technical degree.

indeed. people like to imagine an idealised world of highly able, motivated and disciplined students. why design an education system for a set of students that doesn't really exist?

it's not a problem specific to germany, but he makes a legitimate criticism of the classic lecture format. it is an antiquated mode of delivery, an extremely poor use of students' time, and really should not be part of university education any longer. i suppose it is one way of limiting cost...

i would contend it makes very little difference because of the naturally limited fraction of the population with the ability to benefit from post secondary education.

quite simply, britain overspends massively on higher education

you know not all theoretical models are equilibrium based? guess not if keen is your primary source

i can't find any coherent argument in your final paragraph. can you rephrase it in a way that has some meaning?

mathematical formalism was introduced precisely to allow the formulation of "cogent arguments". you can't evaluate the evidence without economic theory

google the "lucas critique"

gosh, i wonder why those traders use those simple, outdated models to make extraordinarily expensive decisions every singly day when they could just read the "black swan"

reminder: noah has never published an academic paper in economics and it looks unlikely that he ever will. he is simply not a competent guide to the field. this entire thread is a perfect example of the blind leading the blind: a journalist (noah) presents an entirely one sided view of the field, and intellectually lazy posters take it as a cue to dump on an entire academic field while freely admitting their ignorance of any of the details.

newsflash: most economists are acutely aware of the imperfections in their models. sure, you can find the blinkered and dogmatic, but that is unsurprising in such a large and varied field. the subject encompasses a serious variety of subjects and methods you (the hn poster) simply know nothing about. for example, machine learning techniques are really nothing new. theorists have been aware of the kahneman/tversky result for decades. please bear this in mind before you lazily declare the intellectual bankruptcy of the entire field.

p.s so-called econophysics was a direct attempt to apply models from hard science to economics and it has been a complete failure, since it lacks an underlying model of human behaviour. turns out this is quite important...

keen is a complete charlatan and the laughing stock of the economic world. he doesn't even understand the basic economic theory he attempts to criticize

comments like this are amazing. you are completely ignorant of the current state of economics yet wonder if economists have bothered to construct dynamic models of the economy. i guess your intermediate macro course didn't get that far...

that's simply not true. i've worked in BIGOIL (not exxon) and working 7-4 was pretty much the rule.

whether the bald look works depends entirely on cranial and facial structure. circleheads are pretty screwed

most people do not have the aptitude to benefit from a traditional college education. this is not a controversial statement if you've attended an average, fairly representative high school

except you don't learn how to any of those jobs at college. a college education is not even a necessary precondition for success in those roles. i think you've largely missed his point.

thiel is surely smart enough to recognise that the economy will always contain a diverse range of companies and roles within those companies. but there are better ways to train the population if we can only get beyond our fixation on certain credentials

there is no good reason why there can't be meaningful standardised exams for post secondary education. professional bodies set exams at this level in accounting, engineering etc. it would be a much more efficient model.

as he admits, per capita funding has indeed fallen. the problem is an over expansion of higher education. what proportion of the population can really benefit from a full time residential degree course? much less than 50%

but obviously university rankings are only weakly related to the quality of undergrad education. US universities are the "best" at research... not hard to understand

the sniffy tone of architectural critics is irritating. at least in the post war era we actually built sufficient housing